The Self Led Woman Podcast: emotional eating and nervous system healing for self-leadership

For years I believed my emotional eating was a discipline problem.

So I tried everything to fix it.

I tried hypnotherapy.
 Acupuncture.
 Kinesiology.
 Past life regression.
 Affirmations on my walls.
 Personal trainers.
 High protein diets.
 Low carb diets.
 Intuitive eating.
 Juice cleanses.
 The lemon detox diet.
 Running a marathon.
 Blood sugar supplements from a naturopath.
 Ev...

When people talk about emotional eating, the conversation usually focuses on food.

Cravings. Discipline. Willpower.

But when I work with women around emotional eating, the pattern rarely begins with food at all.

It often begins in a moment where something didn’t sit right. A comment that hurt. A boundary that was crossed. A moment where you felt dismissed, unseen, or taken for granted.

And instead of expressing what you felt, you swall...

In this episode, I’m joined by depth psychologist and eating disorder specialist Dr Anita Johnston, author of Eating in the Light of the Moon, for a powerful conversation that will completely shift the way you understand emotional eating and your relationship with food.

We explore why struggles with food and body image are rarely about food itself, and what these patterns are actually trying to communicate beneath the surface.

Dr Joh...

In this episode, I talk about something that might surprise people who are new to my work.

Even though I work with women who struggle with emotional eating, food, and their bodies, weight loss is never the goal of this work.

And there are important reasons for that.

We already live in a culture that constantly tells women their bodies need to be smaller, better, or fixed in some way. Diet culture, wellness marketing, and the fitness i...

In this episode, I share something deeply personal about my own journey with mental health.

At 35, I was diagnosed with bipolar type 2. At the time, it felt like a life sentence. I was told I would likely need medication for the rest of my life and that mood instability would always be something I had to manage.

For years before that diagnosis, I had experienced cycles of depression alongside periods of elevated energy, creativity an...

In this episode, I introduce a concept that can completely change the way you understand your appetite.

It’s called developmental hunger.

Many women believe their hunger means something is wrong with them. They tell themselves they have no discipline, that they’re always hungry, or that they can never feel satisfied around food.

But what if the hunger isn’t actually about food at all?

In this episode, I explore how unmet emotional need...

In this episode, I’m joined by Accredited Practising Dietitian and Credentialled Eating Disorder Clinician Kiah Paetz for a deeply compassionate conversation about healing your relationship with food.

Kiah specialises in supporting people experiencing eating disorders, disordered eating, food anxiety, and neurodivergence through a non diet, weight neutral approach. In this conversation, she shares her own recovery journey with food,...

In this episode, I’m talking about what I believe is the missing piece in emotional eating recovery and it’s not more discipline, willpower, or another plan.

It’s support.

So many women are trying to heal emotional eating, binge eating, food noise, restriction, body checking, and constant bargaining with food all on their own. On the outside, they look like they have it together. But underneath, there’s shame, pressure, and a nervous...

In this episode, we’re talking about food cravings and what they actually mean.

Most women have been taught to see cravings as a lack of discipline or willpower. But cravings aren’t random and they aren’t a personal failure. They’re information from your body and your nervous system.

Sometimes cravings are physical. Your body might need more food, more carbohydrates, more magnesium, or simply more rest.

But cravings can also carry emo...

If you’ve tried plans, tracking, food rules, mindset work, resets, “I’ll start again Monday” — and you still end up back in the same loop… this episode is going to hit.

Because emotional eating isn’t a behaviour problem.

And the reason it keeps coming back isn’t because you lack discipline.

It’s because it’s a survival strategy.

In this episode, I unpack:

• Why most wellness and diet culture approaches keep you stuck
• The difference bet...

In this episode, I’m joined by UK-certified naturopath and yoga teacher Lottie Davies for a grounded and deeply validating conversation about hormones, cravings, nervous system healing, and cyclical living.

We explore what it actually means to reconnect to your body — not through control, restriction, or more rules — but through understanding your natural rhythms.

Inside this conversation, we unpack:

–  Why PMS isn’t a problem — it’s ...

Recently I took time off Instagram and it changed a lot more than I expected.

It didn’t just make me less distracted. It changed the level of presence I have in my relationship. It shifted my creativity. It brought back gratitude in a way I wasn’t even trying to practice. And it also showed me something confronting about my inner critic, my appearance, and how distorted our perception becomes when we’re constantly consuming curated ...

In this episode, I’m talking about something that’s been sitting in my system for a while.

That my relationship with food was never actually about food, it mirrored my relationship to my emotions.

For years, I thought I had a discipline problem. I thought I needed more control, more willpower, more consistency. But the deeper I’ve gone into this work, the clearer it’s become. Food was never the issue. It was the strategy my system us...

At the time of recording, I had two cysts removed from my scalp, and the next morning I couldn’t stop thinking about how incredible the human body is.

Because without instructions, without micromanagement, and without force, it immediately began repairing itself.

And that’s exactly what your system is doing when you emotionally eat.

In this episode, I’m unpacking why emotional eating is rarely about food, and why it’s not self sabotag...

What if strength training had nothing to do with getting smaller and everything to do with living better.

In this episode, I’m joined by Naz Demirtas, certified strength coach and sports nutrition and health coach, to talk about what changes when women stop training for aesthetics and start training for capability.

Naz shares how pregnancy became the turning point that shifted her from dieting and control into deep respect for what t...

There’s a kind of tiredness I want to talk about today.

Not the tiredness sleep fixes.
 Not the tiredness a holiday fixes.

But the exhaustion that comes from carrying too much for too long.

If you’re someone who is capable, responsible, high functioning…
 If your life mostly looks “together”…
 And food is the one place where things sometimes unravel —

This episode is for you.

Because if emotional eating were about discipline...

In this episode, I want to gently but firmly challenge one of the most damaging ideas we’ve been taught about our bodies.

That our body is the problem.
That our eating is the problem.
That weight changes, emotional eating, restriction, or body hatred mean we’ve failed in some way.

They don’t.

Through an Internal Family Systems and somatic trauma lens, we explore how the body doesn’t just react to life, it adapts to it. How pos...

In this episode, I want to gently but firmly challenge one of the most damaging ideas we’ve been taught about our bodies.

That our body is the problem.
 That our eating is the problem.
 That weight changes, emotional eating, restriction, or body hatred mean we’ve failed in some way.

They don’t.

Through an Internal Family Systems and somatic trauma lens, we explore how the body doesn’t just react to life, it adapts to it. How p...

Content note:
This episode includes discussion of eating disorders, including bulimia, and explores emotional eating through a therapeutic lens. Please listen with care and take what feels supportive for you.

In this episode, I want to talk about something that gets missed in almost every conversation about emotional eating.

Because food isn’t always just regulating emotions.
 Sometimes, food is holding roles that never shoul...